In Stopping Campus Rape – NYTimes.com. , the author makes suggestions for college administrators that he thinks (probably correctly) would reduce campus rape. The only problem – they would hurt the universities. Here are the two suggestions he makes for administrators:
- “…break their schools’ symbiotic relationship with the on-campus party scene…”
- “…separate the sexes and supervise social life…”
Here is why I think they wouldn’t work.
“The answer to the question of whether college administrators will even come close to following your suggestions was given by Derek Bok, when, as President of Harvard he told the Board of Overseers
“…Universities appear less and less as charitable institutions seeking truth and serving students, and more and more as a huge commercial operation that differs from corporations only because there are no shareholders and no dividends…” (Report to the Board of Overseers, 1996)
And that’s Harvard. Does anybody think that the Harvard wannabe’s are going to do anything that hurts their business?
The only way to make any difference in higher education is to change the system. We can begin by adding regulation and oversight. (to the sad detriment of academic freedom, but they made their bed…) Even Clark Kerr saw that as the only solution to what he called a “me” generation of professors. But in 1990, nobody was listening.
We need to make it not in any university’s interest to treat students as “consumers” by catering to their “wants”, with little regard to their “needs” – something Kerr and David Riesman saw “unscrupulous professors and institutions” doing as early as 1980.
The present system gives power to those who would take advantage of the naivete of students and parents who buy into the idea that universities, and even professors, can’t be unscrupulous.
Just because people get paid for discovering “truth” does not mean that they themselves are “truthful”.”
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